Crowned with the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1997 (shared with Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry), The Eel made Imamura one of only ten filmmakers to have received the award twice. In Imamura’s later work, his gaze turns increasingly towards the possibility of redemption.

Adapted from Akira Yoshimura’s novel Sparkles in the Darkness, The Eel centres on a murderer, albeit one whose narrative trajectory stands in stark contrast to Vengeance Is Mine. A taciturn, guarded white-collar worker, played with remarkable restraint by Kōji Yakusho, is released on parole after killing his wife and her lover in a fit of passion.

He moves to a small town, carrying no possessions except his pet eel he adopted while incarcerated. Hoping to begin again, tabula rasa, he opens a barbershop in a small town populated only by other quirky misfits. Yet his past begins to creep back in Hitchcockian fashion when a young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to his wife enters his life. Although Imamura reveals a softer side in The Eel, he still refuses to offer straightforward access to his protagonist’s psychology. Instead, meaning percolates through the film’s meticulous symbolism and fragmentary, dreamlike sequences.

What makes the film so unmistakably Imamura is the film’s vibrant ensemble, each supporting character is marked by their own eccentricities and troubled histories: from a fisherman who catches eels in the dead of night to a young UFO fanatic. “I love all the characters in my films,” Imamura once said. “Even the loutish and frivolous ones. I want every one of my shots to express this love.” This sentiment has rarely felt more palpable than in this reflective and unexpectedly tender film.